
. . 


FT MEADE 

GenCol 1 


J*Jn 





| V 

W? f 




H' J 



1’-.' 1 

1 | 

1' 

■ 1 




1 


l! ■ 








Class 



Booki4/jLkJ2 


Copyright N°. 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



































1 



• -v_ 















































































> 










' 






















































/ 








* 




« • 


V 
































W 


I CHOOSE 

BY 

GERTRUDE CAPEN WHITNEY 


AUTHOR OF 

“YET SPEAKETH he” 



BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
MDCCCCX 



-f 

Copyright, 1910 
Sherman, French & Company 





©CI.A261086 


TO 

MY HUSBAND 

GEORGE ERASTUS WHITNEY 




♦ I 




CHAPTER I 


Y Ellen climbed heavily 
the stairs to the bare room 
ich was the only place she 
I to call home, closed the 
Dr desperately, sat down 
on the one chair, that had no top to its 
back, and a very unsafe leg, and pulled off 
her shoes. They were coarse, heavy shoes, 
and the uppers were worn, causing the 
pressure of the leather to accentuate itself 
just across the bend of the big toe joint. A 
few hot tears dropped on to her nose, while 
both hands were employed, and tickled it, 
and that made her angry in addition to her 
exhaustion and desperation. 

“Oh, I am so tired,” she gasped; “God 
knows my feet ache so I can scarcely walk!” 

“Mary Ellen!” came the shrill call of a 
child. “Come get me my luncheon, Mary 
Ellen, Ma’ Ellen!” 

“Damn ’em!” she said vengefully, pre- 
1 



2 I CHOOSE 

tending not to hear. “Here it is four o’clock 
and that young one coming in to a one 
o’clock lunch. Get me my luncheon in- 
deed!” and she threw one of the shoes at the 
opposite wall so fiercely that it made another 
dent in the already much disfigured plaster 
of the room. 

“Ma’Ellen, Mary Ellen!” 

“Marie Alano!” called a maturer and 
sweeter voice, with a downward inflection. 
“Marie Alano?” came the voice still nearer, 
with the rising inflection sweet and clear, fol- 
lowed by a little tap and an opening of the 
door disclosing each woman to the other’s 
view: — one a sullen, discouraged, heart- 
hopeless specimen of humanity in a room 
bare of the comforts of life, and the other a 
girl of about eighteen in the full glow of 
health and contentment. 

“Marie Alano,” she continued pleasantly, 
“I told the children it was a shame to bring 
you down again so soon, and when I have to 
do a thing I am tired of doing, I sometimes 
play I am someone else, and call myself by 
another name. Doesn’t it make it easier for 
you to get that thoughtless hoy’s lunch be- 


I CHOOSE 3 

cause I call you Marie Alano?” she con- 
cluded with a laugh. 

“I don’t think it does,” replied Mary 
Ellen sullenly. “It isn’t as if it was once in 
a while, but it’s always and always.” 

“He has brought back such a fine string 
of fish, Marie Alano. Don’t you like fish?” 

“Very much,” responded Mary Ellen 
dully, “but every time he brings them in, 
your mother has just enough cooked for the 
family and sends the rest out to the neigh- 
bors. She never fails to consider her next 
door friend with horses and automobiles a 
nearer and hungrier neighbor than I,” 
she continued, the despair of her tone taking 
the edge off her insolence. “She reads her 
Bible : ‘Who doeth to the biggest, and not to 
the least, of these.’ ” 

“Is Ma’ Ellen coming?” again screamed 
the lad. “Ma’ Ellen, do hurry! I just 
want a snack and then I’m off to take some 
of my fish to Molly Gringa.” 

“What did I tell you?” said Mary Ellen 
sombrely, but with a shadow of humor flit- 
ting over her face, to be replaced at once by 
a heavy scowl. “Hit the nail, didn’t I?” 


4 


I CHOOSE 

She put on her ragged shoes and followed 
Aldine Thurston down stairs. The half hour 
she had hoped to gain for rest was taken in 
getting Guy’s lunch; then came prepara- 
tions for dinner. During that time she was 
called repeatedly to the door to admit call- 
ers and then to serve tea. Between rings 
she was reprimanded for not having on a 
spotless apron and for the untidy appear- 
ance of her hair. Her sullen retort that she 
hadn’t been able to comb it since six o’clock, 
because when she went up stairs to do it 
Guy had called her back, elicited only the 
response that she was stepping very care- 
lessly and must see that her shoes were in 
better condition in the future. She could 
scarcely control her features, and was al- 
most on the verge of breaking down in the 
room when her attention was arrested by 
something one of the callers was saying. 

“It’s lots of fun,” she was latighing. 
“She says the whole change in her life came 
on the heels of someone’s calling her by an- 
other name than her own. Now she is won- 
dering if that really had anything to do with 
the metamorphose. She is daffy on tracing 


5 


I CHOOSE 

results to causes, you know, and says things 
have been waving towards her and reaching 
her, too, ever since.” 

“If we believe that all electrons have 
chemical affinity, it seems as if we, as choos- 
ing souls, might elect our lots in life,” said a 
grave, sweet-looking woman. “I think that 
is what the doctrine of election means, — not 
that we are of the elected, chosen by a domi- 
neering God, but that we elect our part of 
God’s gifts or elect to pass them by. We 
have the power of choice. Of course, if we 
are of one substance with God we possess his 
attributes. Whether we use them or not is 
another matter.” 

“Some people choose very strange gifts,” 
responded one of the guests. “Do you be- 
lieve we make our own environment?” 

“Yes; but I also think that surroundings 
and environment do not signify the same 
thing.” 

“I’ve never thought anything about it,” 
interluded Aldine; “but I don’t suppose they 
do. What difference do you make in their 
meaning?” 

“I think a man may be surrounded by 


6 


I CHOOSE 
physical manifestations, as a ditch or a 
railroad gulch, but may be environed by 
such a perfect comprehension of the relative 
values of the things in life that his mind 
makes for him a heaven, as in the case of lit- 
tle Sara Crewe.” 

“Mary Ellen, do you hear the bell? It 
has rung twice,” said Mrs. Thurston in an 
aside to Mary Ellen, who had been standing 
motionless beside the tea table during this 
conversation. 

“Mary Ellen was listening as if she were 
Neptune, my poodle, and our words were 
juicy bones for her to catch,” laughed Har- 
riet Blount; but Felicia looked dreamy and 
smiled. 

“I don’t know why she hung round like 
that after she had brought in tea. She never 
did it before. She is usually so glad to get 
away that she doesn’t stop to wait on us half 
decently,” sighed Mrs. Thurston. “Felicia, 
how do you always have such perfect ser- 
vice! I declare the servant question is get- 
ting worse and worse.” 

The callers, who were all intimate friends 
of Aldine’s trooped merrily out together. 


I CHOOSE 7 

Mary Ellen stood at the entrance. Only 
one of the group gave the servant a glance 
or kindly nod as they swarmed by her like 
bees, though she had opened the door to 
them several times a month for years. Mary 
Ellen did not expect recognition, and did 
not look at any of the outgoers till Felicia’s 
fine lace scarf caught the key of the door. 

Stooping to disentangle it, she looked into 
Felicia’s eyes, then said softly, “Miss 
Felicia, who is Sara Crewe?” 

“Felicia, I hope you did not tear that ex- 
quisite lace,” said Mrs. Thurston, who, with 
Aldine, had accompanied the party to the 
door to view the sunset. “It is as fine as the 
gossamers one sees lying over the grass on a 
summer’s morning. I know your Uncle 
Beverly brought it to you from Spain,” and 
she stepped between Felicia and the maid, 
leaving the latter’s question unanswered. 

“Mary Ellen, I am surprised,” she said 
severely, after the door was closed upon the 
callers, “truly surprised. To think of your 
presuming to speak to my guests! It must 
not occur again.” 

Mary Ellen said nothing, but went to the 


8 


I CHOOSE 
dining room to prepare the table for dinner. 
A happy gleam was in her eyes. 

“No matter,” she said to herself, “Miss 
Aldine called me by a new name, and I’ll 
find Sara Crewe yet, and get her to tell me 
what they mean.” 


CHAPTER II 



sarcastically 


gT was very true that none of 
the fine catch of fish was left 
for the kitchen unless they 
choose to eat the fins and 
leavings, as the cook said 
but Mary Ellen, though she 
usually cared very much, seemed not to 
notice this time, for within her she was say- 
ing, “Perhaps there’s a way out. They said 
we had attributes like God. Attributes — 
environment — surroundings — relative val- 
ues — Sara Crewe. I must put those down 
when I get up stairs, and try to find out 
what they mean; attributes — environment — 
surroundings — relative values — Sara 
Crewe;” and she hummed the words over to 
herself while doing the dishes lest she forget 
them before she found time to transfer them 
from her brain to paper. “We possess the 
power of choice! H’m! I don’t believe it. 
Think I’d be dragging along this way with- 
9 


10 


I CHOOSE 

out a minute to call my own? Choice! I 
guess not! Well, I don't have to wash dishes 
in this shut-up pantry, hot as blazes and 
smelling of dinner enough to make me sick! 
I can open a window. How good the fresh 
air smells. Maybe that move is something 
towards changing surroundings. It’s better, 
anyhow, and the thing that made me think 
of doing it may be the first step toward 
change of environment. One is inside and 
one is out. Ha, ha!” 

“What are you laughing about, Mary 
Ellen? I haven’t heard you laugh for the 
longest,” said cook. 

“I’m laughing because I didn’t think I 
was smart, and now I begin to believe I am.” 

“Whatever’s led you to that notion?” said 
cook, wonderingly. 

“No doubt it surprises you, but it doesn’t 
me so much as that I’ve never known it be- 
fore. Surroundings: the outside thing about 
me. Environment: the feeling I live, in- 
side! Now I want to find Sara Crewe, and 
find her I will. They say there’s never one 
dish broken without three, and by the same 
token I don’t see why I may not hear her 


11 


I CHOOSE 
name twice more. How much better I feel 
since I let in that fresh air. I’d like to take 
a run out, now my work is done, but Mrs. 
Thurston is so particular about our going 
only on set days.” 

She toiled upstairs and lighted her oil 
lamp. There was no electricity on the upper 
floor, and though the rooms were palatial 
below, those which formed the servants’ dor- 
mitory were as ugly as the most ardent as- 
pirant for outside effects instead of inside 
comforts could have designed. 

“Phew!” she said, “how it smells! I can’t 
blame the Thurstons for that, — and I sleep 
in it every night! They haven’t given me 
much to boast of by way of furnishings, but 
I have two windows, and God knows I never 
use them.” 

She whipped tip the sashes to their full 
length and inhaled with joy the fresh tang 
of the June air. 

“There’s a street band playing a waltz. I 
believe I’ll pretend some Sandy has invited 
me to a party.” 

She took several turns, but stopped, 
quickly exhausted by the unusual exercise. 


12 


I CHOOSE 
and interrupted by tripping over a ragged 
bit of carpet at the foot of her bed. 

“Do you suppose I chose that? Well, I’ve 
let it stay here accumulating dust, besides 
running the risk of a broken leg. If I did 
not choose to have it put here, I need not 
choose to have it stay,” and she vigorously 
rolled up the pieces, of which there were 
several, and, with a shame new to her, found 
in the dust outlining the edges of each rtig, 
unfailing proof that they had not been 
moved in the rather rare periods of sweep- 
ing. 

“She doesn’t give me time to clean up,” 
she excused herself. “I never get a real good 
chance at it. It looks bare now without 
those rags, and much easier to sweep. Phew, 
what a dust ! I suppose I breathe that every 
night. I truly have chosen dust instead of 
fresh air, I do believe. Believe? I know I 
have! And my evening, instead of being 
lonely and heart-achy, is becoming very in- 
teresting. Mrs. Thurston didn’t like these 
old shoes. I will put on my Sunday ones 
to-morrow, throw these into the trash, and 
trust to the Lord for the next pair. Phew, 


13 


I CHOOSE 

how old they smell! It seems as if every- 
thing smells different. The sweet smells are 
sweeter, and the old smells are older than I 
ever noticed them to be. I have lots of old 
shoes in the closet. I’ve always felt abused 
that I couldn’t have pretty things about me, 
— but if I can’t have what I’d like, I need 
not choose such a mess of old stuff as this. 
These old aprons can never be used, even to 
patch with, and this dress is too bad to wear 
down stairs, but the top will make a frock 
for Louisa’s Minzie.” 

Twelve o’clock found Mary Ellen viewing 
two large piles, one of debris and one of odds 
and ends presumably useable for “Louisa’s 
Minzie.” There was pitifully little left in 
the drawers and on the nails of the small 
closet, but somehow Mary Ellen did not 
mind. She was glad to be freed from so 
many encumbrances. 

“Phew!” she said again, (it seemed now 
to have become her favorite expression) “a 
dirty room begets a dirty owner, and I would 
be ashamed to tell how long it is since I took 
a good, honest scrub. Little excuse, for we 
do have hot water a plenty, and a bath room 


14 


I CHOOSE 

of our own on this floor. I suppose I’ve 
chosen dirt and smell, and lots of it, and 
have not chosen to remove what I could. 
While I am about it, I will give my hair a 
shampoo ; it used to be real pretty, but lately 
it has grown wiry.” 

The clean body called for a fresh gown, 
which was not always forthcoming, for 
Mary Ellen had to do her own washing in 
addition to the duties imposed by her posi- 
tion, and therefore was chary of changing 
too often. 

“I have chosen quite a number of things 
that do not make me proud of my taste,” she 
said, as with a freshly beaten bed and pil- 
lows, clean sheets and body, and partly open 
windows she crept into bed at two o’clock. 
“I will not forget to find out more about the 
words ‘attributes,’ ‘surroundings,’ ‘environ- 
ment’ and ‘relative values,’ and I will find 
Sara Crewe. I wish this bed smelt fresher; 
it must be very old. Perhaps, if I choose J I 
can get a better one some day. Maybe Sara 
Crewe can tell me how.” 


CHAPTER III 



a beau ! She isn’t going to 


HITTIKINS ! D’ye see how 


prinky Mary Ellen looks?” 
said Guy Thurston at break- 
fast. “ She must be having 


be married, is she, ma ? I saw her carting 
a lot of stuff from her room this morning as 
I came in from my swim.” 

“I hope not,” said Mrs. Thurston, and as 
soon as breakfast was over and Mary Ellen 
engaged with the dishes, she, after the man- 
ner of many mistresses, made a thorough ex- 
amination of her maid’s belongings. No 
nook or cranny was sacred. Even the poor 
little trunk disclosed its scanty contents. 

“It is deliciously clean,” she said delight- 
edly, after a strict survey. “I always dread 
to go into the servants’ rooms, they do have 
that perfectly dreadful odor; but here both 
windows are open. She even has a little can 
of chlorides Under the bed; and look, Aldine, 


15 



16 . 1 CHOOSE 

her mattress and pillows are actually sun- 
ning.’ ’ 

“What vile pillows,” said Aldine, in a tone 
half sad, wholly shocked, “And mother, has 
this mattress ever been done over?” 

“Come to think of it, no. It was part of 
my wedding outfit, too.” 

“Twenty years! Horrible, mother, and 
cotton at that! You make any girl who 
sleeps on such a thing a germ carrier. Is 
there nothing down stairs you can exchange 
for this and surprise the old soul when she 
comes up to bed?” 

“To tell the truth, I don’t think any of the 
beds have been made over since I married.” 

“Horrors! Not the one Uncle Thad died 
on — and of consumption — and it’s the one I 
sleep on too.” 

“I never thought.” 

“No, people were not taught as we are in 
college today about such things, but I won’t 
sleep on it another night, — not another 
night !” 

“I’ll send it to the mattress maker’s ” 

“No, you won’t, mother, dear, you’ll send 
it to the bonfire, and we’ll have the holo- 


I CHOOSE 17 

caust on the beach and invite the neighbors. 
Beds should be made over every three years 
for hygiene’s sake, and every five for de- 
cency’s. I will telephone Basset to send us 
new sets throughout, pillows and beds for 
the whole establishment. Then I shall issue 
invitations for such a big bonfire that peo- 
ple will think the commission has trans- 
ferred the ship burning off the island to 
Quinibeck. But, mother, see how bare 
everything is. We might spare a little from 
down stairs.” 

“We might spare a good deal,” said Mrs. 
Thurston, rather shamefacedly; “but as 
Mary Ellen has clearly demonstrated her 
choice of cleanly bareness rather than dirty 
trash, I hesitate to send it up here. Much of 
it might better join your holocaust.” 

Aldine and her mother went down stairs, 
the former to telephone first for the mat- 
tresses and, second, for some thirty young 
people to attend a bonfire on Quinibeck 
Beach, at eight that evening. 

“But, Aldine,” expostulated Mrs. Thurs- 
ton, “supposing the beds don’t come?” 

“Then I’ll sleep on the floor as far as I am 


18 


I CHOOSE 

concerned. Ugh! I am horrified at this reve- 
lation of the ways of housekeeping of past 
generations,” returned Aldine vigorously. 

As Mrs. Thurston entered her own sump- 
tuously appointed bedroom, she felt op- 
pressed. But two of the six windows were 
open, and her impulse was at once to throw 
wide the other four. When Aldine entered, 
the breeze was blowing merrily from the sea 
on one side and from the hills on the other 
over a mass of heterogeneous articles Mrs. 
Thurston was throwing into the middle of 
the floor. 

“Aldine, suppose you run up and hang 
this brown linen in Mary Ellen’s room. It 
is perfectly fresh and quite too tight for me. 
I think it will fit her to perfection, for she 
was fitted to my dresses last fall, you know, 
when I was so desperately sick and had to 
have the dresses to be operated in, — oh, well, 
you know what I mean, — to get there in, 
then, if that pleases you better; and here is 
that striped mohair, and a whole stack of 
white shirtwaists.” 

“She will never be able to wear them. 
She never goes out, does she, and you keep 
her everlastingly in black in the house.” 


19 


I CHOOSE 

“I’ll tell her to go out more often, to cele- 
brate their use,” said Mrs. Thurston mag- 
nanimously. 

“And can’t we spare some of these rucks 
of magazines and these little books one is 
deluged with for gifts and one always means 
to read, they contain so much that is lovely, 
and never gets to! And, mother, mayn’t I 
bring away that disreputable, armless, leg- 
less, backless chair, and take up this little 
wicker one with the yellow chrysanthemum 
cushion?” 

Downstairs, Mary Ellen, unusually 
happy, was humming to herself, as she pol- 
ished the silver, “Attributes, surroundings, 
environment, relative values : how can I find 
out what they mean? I will find Sara 
Crewe 1” 


CHAPTER IV 


HE mattresses arrived about 
four o’clock that afternoon ; 
and though it was not pos- 
sible, without too much in- 
convenience, to prevent Mary 
Ellen from seeing the influx, it was easy to 
make the change in her room without her 
knowledge. Guy, upon being initiated 
into the plan, desired to add his tribute ; 
but as he was not yet sufficiently versed 
in the secret of giving to be willing to 
part with anything he wanted, he contrib- 
uted nothing but an old arithmetic, a gram- 
mar and rhetoric, a school dictionary which 
he disliked, and two small rugs which he 
hated because he stumbled over them when- 
ever he went into the room in a hurry, no 
matter how many times he had determined to 
lift his feet over them. It was a miscellane- 
ous pile of literature, some twenty volumes 
in all, and most of them, except Guy’s, were 
20 




21 


I CHOOSE 
little holiday gift books. Aldine felt that 
they necessitated a pretty table cover as a 
background. So when Mary Ellen went up- 
stairs that afternoon to refresh herself for 
tea and dinner service, a strange, choking 
sensation overwhelmed her as she looked 
about. 

“What a little makes a big difference in 
one’s surroundings,” she mused. “Sur- 
roundings! That’s it — it’s what you have 
about you. But what is it that often makes 
the same place feel different and be differ- 
ent? After all, one can choose some of it. I 
believe nights, after I get up here, I’ll think 
what I’d choose, could I have what I want. 
It seems more decent and alive than to be 
thinking I wish’t I was dead and how I hate 
those I’m working for. I wouldn’t hate my 
work if I could feel I gave satisfaction. Oh, 
here’s a dictionary. I haven’t seen one since 
I left home. I wonder what became of 
father’s books. I will get some of them 
when I go hack. I could have had them be- 
fore, but I didn’t choose ” she laughed. “I 
need not have been wondering what all those 
words mean if I hadn’t chosen . Isn’t it in- 


22 


I CHOOSE 

teresting? To choose: ‘to select,’ etc. I would 
rather choose to he something myself than to 
have . It seems as if, should I choose to be 
helpful and trustworthy and quick-witted 
and kind, the things will come easy enough. 
Why, that is choosing attributes,” she con- 
tinued, turning to that word. “Attributes 
means qualities. Somehow I feel as if I had 
been praying. Doesn’t the Bible say, 
‘Choose ye this day whom ye will serve,’ and 
choose — what else? I declare, I have no 
Bible. I will buy one tomorrow. 

“I don’t like the looks of these dirty 
walls,” she added, giving a last look around 
before putting out the light; “I choose to 
have them clean if they are to be part of my 
surroundings. I wish I understood the 
meaning of environment. I can’t get much 
from the dictionary. No matter. I choose 
to understand, and understand I shall!” 


CHAPTER V 



iRS. Thurston,” said Mary 
Ellen next morning, “ there 
is a plasterer over at that 
new house. Do you mind if 
I ask him to come and patch 
the walls of my room ? They are pretty 
good places for germs, and they are not 
sightly, to say the least. I don’t believe 
he will charge me anything, for I fixed 
him up comfortably when he had a bad burn 
from lime one day, and he said he would al- 
ways stand ready to return the kindness as 
best he could.” 

“A good idea, Mary Ellen. Do as you 
choose; and wouldn’t you like a pretty pa- 
per? You can go down town this afternoon 
and choose it yourself.” 

Mary Ellen was even more delighted by 
Mrs. Thurston’s use of the word choose than 
at the thought of the paper. She had very 
good taste and selected a dainty covering of 



24 I CHOOSE 

white ground on which were grouped 
bunches of forget-me-nots and bachelor’s 
buttons. 

“Blue eyes and blue flowers always seem 
so seeing ” she said to the shop-keeper. “I 
could never lie to blue eyes, they always 
seem to want, and to demand, truth.” 

“I wouldn’t want to lie to brown ones, 
either,” said the shop-keeper, observing the 
color of Mary Ellen’s. “I have some pretty 
silkaline that will go very nicely with this 
for curtains,” he continued insinuatingly, 
and Mary Ellen, for less than a dollar of 
her own money, found herself with dainty 
draperies to curtain the naked windows. 

“Now I choose to show my gratitude to 
Mrs. Thurston, for she has been kinder than 
ever before, and I am going to surprise 
her,” she continued to herself, pleased to 
ring the words choose and choice constantly 
in her own ears ; and gaining some pertinent 
advice regarding preparing the walls and 
papering from her friend the plasterer, who 
had been also a paper-hanger, and some as- 
sistance from him as to sizing and cutting, 
she astonished Mrs. Thurston, before that 


I CHOOSE 25 

lady had even begun to think of sending for 
a workman, by announcing the triumphant 
completion of the room. 

“You need not have done it yourself, 
Mary Ellen,” said Mrs. Thurston, mysti- 
fied. “Did you think I was not willing to 
do it for you? I was, perfectly so.” 

“No, Mrs. Thurston, but I choose to help 
better my surroundings,” she replied, un- 
conscious of any strangeness in her remark, 
and unmindful of Mrs. Thurston’s look of 
astonishment. 

“Why, you will be like little Sara Crewe.” 

“Who was she, Mrs. Thurston?” said 
Mary Ellen; but jtist then Aldine burst into 
the room. 

“Mother, they want me for one of the 
principal characters in the pageant, and I 
shall have to begin lessons at once. What 
shall I do for a chaperone?” 

“Heaven knows!” sighed Mrs. Thurston. 
It was her way to call upon heaven as if it 
were a sort of deaf Buddha that on no ac- 
count could be prevailed upon to hear any- 
thing she said. Her supplication was al- 
ways accompanied with an exhausted expi- 


26 


I CHOOSE 

ration of the breath* When she respired 
it was so little that Mary Ellen, who natu- 
rally breathed with the full capacity of her 
lungs wondered sometimes how she man- 
aged to keep alive on the quantity she in- 
haled. She always spoke after the exhaust, 
consequently her voice, instead of being full 
of power, rasped the listener and herself, un- 
witting that every word caused complete 
readjustment of each cell in her body. 

“I should think these society women 
would chatter themselves to death,” Mary 
Ellen had often thought. She waited op- 
portunity to repeat her query about Sara 
Crewe, after Aldine’s question should have 
been answered. 

“Heavens!” again sighed Mrs. Thurston. 
“I can’t chaperone every move you make. I 
didn’t lug my mother about every time I 
went out.” 

“I don’t choose it,” said Aldine; “but, 
mother, all the others do, and you just must 
chaperone me.” 

“I just won’t, then. If you can’t behave 
without me, you can’t with me; of that I’m 
very sure.” 


I CHOOSE 27 

“It isn’t the behaving, mother. Of 
course I would do that. It is the protecting, 
for we have to go up to town for the lessons, 
and the men are so bold, they don’t stop at 
just a wink and a hat lift now-a-days.” 

“There is no necessity for any woman 
who behaves herself to he spoken to,” said 
Mrs. Thurston severely. 

“I used to think that, but the art of fas- 
cination is being reduced to a science, and 
too many of low moral fibre are studying its 
principles and demonstrating them not to 
be able to outwit us callow women some- 
times, for it’s little enough study based on 
principle that we do. Knowledge is hap- 
hazard with us, for good or bad. How many 
of our mothers ever sit down and teach us 
principles to protect us from these fascina- 
tors all wool and a yard wide?” 

“We wouldn’t dream of doing such a 
thing.” 

“No, so we girls are discovering to our 
cost. Well, about the chaperone?” 

“How would Mary Ellen do?” said Mrs. 
Thurston. “What are you waiting for, 
Mary Ellen? But since you are here we 


28 


I CHOOSE 

will arrange it now. You can hurry and 
get your work done and then go with Miss 
Aldine to Mme. Pinchot’s; and remember, 
you must never smile or act as if you were 
one of the party, under any provocation; 
and if any one dares look at Miss Aldine 
report him at once to the police.” 

“And have us dragged into court! Oh, 
mother, where is your diplomacy? Mary 
Ellen and I must adopt more skilful meth- 
ods than that; and mayn’t she ever smile, 
mother, not even with me alone?” 

“If you wish your maid to be correct you 
must have an automaton.” 

“With the wisdom of a Solon in reserve! 
Mary Ellen, if mother is so obdurate about 
your smile and I find we are so jolly you 
just can’t repress one, I will send you to the 
dressing room for my handkerchief to let 
you relieve the congestion.” 

“I’ll learn to smile inside, Miss Aldine,” 
said Mary Ellen, “and I’ll take the place as 
best I can, Mrs. Thurston.” 

“Heaven knows how I shall get along 
without you half of nearly every day; but 
be sure you do everything before you go, be- 
cause I can not have the house upset.” 


29 


I CHOOSE 

“And as for smiling inside, it seems to me 
as if you had been doing that pretty much 
all the time lately,” said Guy, who had just 
come in from fishing, “and Mary Ellen, I 
left some fish down in the kitchen for you 
and cook. Somehow, mother always thinks 
of someone to send them to before you get 
any, so this time I left yours downstairs be- 
fore I reported,” and he smiled at Aldine 
behind the maid’s back, for Aldine had con- 
fided in Guy and had suggested the plan 
of action. 

“Then, Marie Alano,” laughed Aldine, 
“you must become my ogress by ten to- 
morrow morning.” 

“And remember, Mary Ellen,” reiterated 
Mrs. Thurston, “be sure to have everything 
done before you start.” 


CHAPTER VI 



2ME. Pinchot was one of the 
most beautiful women Mary 
Ellen had ever set eyes upon, 
a beauty that, more than 
physical, possessed all the 
superb qualities of a perfect physique ; a 
mentality than scintillated ; an emotive 
life which made itself felt at all times in 
luminous waves about her ; and a spiritual 
power that held in superb poise all 
the phases that manifest consciously and in- 
telligently in symmetrically unfolding man. 

She entered upon the work of the pageant 
with the thought that in reviving history in 
this manner there were brought before both 
beholder and participant the duty of civic 
patriotism and the beauty of co-operation; 
and she demanded an earnestness from her 
pupils which brooked no levity. 

“What is worth doing at all, young ladies, 
is worth doing well,” she asserted. “I do 
30 


31 


I CHOOSE 
not consider it sufficient that you are giving 
your services. I want you also to pledge 
your best endeavors, and the whole of your 
minds’ activities.” 

Every day for weeks Mary Ellen took her 
place at a stated time, on a straight, hard 
chair, in the hall where the lessons were 
given. For one long hour did she sit, the 
automaton Mrs. Thurston so desired. 

“What’s worth doing at all is worth doing 
well,” she repeated, applying Mme. Pin- 
chot’s remarks to herself, “and if I can’t fol- 
low her other instructions, I can follow that 
if I choose . I can imagine I am doing the 
exercises myself while I am sitting here,” 
and she listened intently to the instruction 
given by the beautiful woman, learning the 
history of the times the pageant represented, 
and graphically explained by Mme. Pin- 
chot ; and when the girls were executing the 
preliminary exercises tending to give them 
grace and rhythm, she did not watch them 
and their imperfections, but closed her eyes 
and in her vision beheld herself as in a 
luminous atmosphere sway to and fro, or 
otherwise attain the rhythm Mme. Pinchot 


32 


I CHOOSE 
so idealized and longed to actualize in her 
pupils. While doing this it seemed as if 
sight, hearing and all her other senses am- 
plified and expanded in a sea of feeling 
reaching out and connecting her with things 
far beyond her understanding; and when 
the hour of her silence was over, she felt as 
if she had been in some far-off fairer world, 
which was more really her own than the 
one she lived in could ever be. 

The daily trips on the boat had given her 
color and charm ; the care she was giving her 
hair and skin was making itself palpable in 
effect; the modish, but strictly severe black 
mohair faintly lined with white, which 
Mrs. Thurston had given her, topped by a 
severe hat, made her look so nearly the equal 
of Aldine that often gentlemen, greeting 
Miss Thurston on the boat, would wait ex- 
pectantly to be introduced, and the auto- 
matic expression which Mary Ellen always 
preserved was insufficient to protect Aldine 
from the irritation of having to explain that 
she was carrying about, not a society block- 
head, but an eminently correct companion. 

“Whittikins ! Mary Ellen,” said Guy one 


33 


I CHOOSE 
day, “I thought you were an old woman; but 
I don’t believe you are any older than Al- 
dine.” 

“Yes, a little, Master Guy,” replied 
Mary Ellen. “I’m into my twenties.” 

“If you had Aldine’s environment you’d 
knock spots out of her.” 

“Environment? What is that, Master 
Guy?” 

“Oh, look it up in the dictionary I gave 
you,” said Guy, somewhat abashed. “Lord! 
Mary Ellen, you don’t expect people to 
know how to explain every word they use, 
do you? It’s what you are brought up in, I 
suppose.” 

“The ladies said it was different from 
surroundings.” 

“Well, you’ve got me! I can’t help you 
out.” 

“Mme. Pinchot said in the class the other 
day that one could live in squalid surround- 
ings and possess a beautiful environment, 
for environment is made out of things of 
the soul. One can know poets and great 
writers and thinkers in one’s environment, 
while surrounded by apple venders and 


34 


I CHOOSE 
chestnut stands. I can’t Understand it, and 
Master Guy, who is Sara Crewe?” 

“I don’t know. Why?” 

“I want to talk with her; and Master Guy 
I’ve gone through that arithmetic and 
grammar and read the rhetoric. I don’t 
understand all of that, but I used to be good 
at figures and English, though I left school 
at sixteen. Have you an Algebra you would 
lend me? I had gone into Algebra some 
ways when I left school, and liked it.” 

“I guess I can find you one,” replied Guy. 
“Gosh, you must like to study. I should 
think you’d be sort of lonely. I call it 
darned mean to keep servants shut up 
nights all but once a week and every other 
Sunday. They even let horses exercise, and 
if the work’s done, what’s the odds?” 

“They need me to answer bells and such 
things.” 

“I should think it would make you feel 
awfully measley. I’d die if I had to be 
cooped up and couldn’t run. What do you 
do nights, anyhow?” 

“For one thing, I have been practicing 
what Mme. Pinchot teaches. I watch her 


35 


I CHOOSE 

all lesson time and try to express the ideas 
in the evening.’ * 

“Be Joan of Arc listening to the voices. 
Whittikins! Mary Ellen, you scare me. 
You really hear them, don’t you? What’s 
got into you lately?” 

“I just found out, some time ago, Mas- 
ter Guy, that I wasn’t choosing lots of 
sweet things in life that I could easily select, 
and that I had the choice of letting go many 
things that were not so agreeable ; so day by 
day I pick and choose, pick and choose.” 

“Gosh!” was Guy’s polite rejoinder. 
“Well, it’s doing you lots of good, Mary 
Ellen. You are getting to be a perfect 
stunner.” 

Mr. Thurston often went up to town with 
Aldine and Mary Ellen. He was a fine 
looking man, as the world would say, — of 
gross type, large proportions, and eyes 
whose air of open candor did not, to the ini- 
tiated, conceal the furtiveness beneath. 

One day, after reaching the hall where the 
lessons were held, Aldine was seized with a 
faintness; and after the stir incident to the 
attack was over, Mme. Pinchot faced a class 


36 I CHOOSE 

ready to render intricate figures which it 
needed the full number of pupils to express. 
Everybody’s time would be lost could no 
substitute be found. Sweeping her eyes 
over the hall as if to find answer to a wish, 
she encountered the gaze of Mary Ellen. 

“Do you think you could take the vacant 
place?” she said. “It will prevent the loss 
of time, and we have none to spare.” 

Aldine, who was resting easily on a couch, 
declared herself well enough to dispense 
with Mary Ellen’s attendance, and soon, in 
a cheese-cloth robe, the maid took her place 
with the others. The first figure was Guido 
Reni’s “Aurora.” Aldine had been given 
the place of the most prominent muse in the 
wonderful elusive dance created by Mme. 
Pinchot. Mary Ellen had watched and 
visioned the part many times ; and a gasp of 
delight ran through the company at the 
wonderful impersonation, without correc- 
tion, in the exquisite preliminary dance. At 
its close a burst of applause greeted her. 

“Bravo! bravo! Mme. Pinchot, I have 
never seen anything so beautiful,” said Mr. 
Thurston, who had entered the hall, having 


I CHOOSE 37 

been telephoned for at the first signs of Al- 
dine’s indisposition. “Introduce me to that 
prodigy of yours, Mme. Pinchot.” 

Mme. Pinchot laughed. “That is wholly 
Unnecessary, Mr. Thurston. She has often 
answered your door bell or handed you your 
tea, perhaps. She is your daughter’s maid.” 

She drew back a little and a quick pallor 
overspread her face, which as quickly disap- 
peared, as the immediate atmosphere of the 
man revealed to her a dull and murky red, 
and a sombre gleam leaped to his eyes. A 
sudden protruding of the lower part of the 
head and almost imperceptible lurching for- 
ward of the shoulders caused Mme. Pinchot 
to turn to Mary Ellen and send her at once 
to the dressing room to resume her ordinary 
apparel. She then threw herself into con- 
versation with Mr. Thurston, undulating 
her magnificent physique and throwing 
forth her strongest waves of fascination; 
but when Mary Ellen reappeared and left 
the hall with Aldine and her father, she 
said piteously to herself, “No, I have not 
been able to make him forget! God help 
her! The lamb is in the ravening lion’s 
claws !” 


CHAPTER VII 


7 Ellen had just laid aside 
arithmetic and taken up 
Rhetoric that evening, 
:n there came a tap at the 
v. The cook had gone 
out and no one ever came to her room but 
Guy, who usually prefaced his advent by 
calling from below ; so with a feeling of 
portent she opened the door. The blood 
flooded to her face and left it deathly pale 
as she saw Mr. Thurston standing at the 
entrance with a plate of fruit in his hand. 

“I’ve come to see how they treat this very 
valuable member of my household. We 
don’t mean to be unkindly, but there is so 
much to fill our minds. You know we al- 
ways mean well by you, and if you need any 
little thing, don’t hesitate to ask me. Here 
is some fruit. And what do you do up here 
by yourself every evening? Don’t you get 
lonely?” and he attempted to pass through 
38 



I CHOOSE 39 

the entrance, which instinctively she had 
kept filled by her position. 

“I do well, Mr. Thurston, with books the 
family have kindly supplied me. Your 
wife ” 

“Oh yes, doubtless she has been kind; but 
women of her age don’t realize that a young 
thing like you needs recreation. Lord! To 
think of a girl of your fibre spending her life 
in quarters such as these.” 

“I have the power of choice, sir, to better 
my surroundings as soon as I can separate 
them sufficiently from myself not to carry 
them with me wherever I go. I must make 
myself better than that about me before I 
can lift myself out of it. Change alone 
will not accomplish the purpose. It is char- 
acter I need, not change.” 

“Gad ! you live up in the garret in reality, 
don’t you, — in the upper story, as the maga- 
zines say. Look otit the roof doesn’t leak.” 

“I intend to knock the roof off some day 
and live in the open altogether, sir, if I ever 
get to that stage.” 

“You’re a fine girl, d’ye know it?” he said, 
pushing a little closer, and a dull flush 
mounting and suffusing his very eyes. 


40 I CHOOSE 

“I thank you for the compliment, Mr. 
Thurston,” she replied, changing her voice 
in no whit. “I greatly esteem the qualities 
that make for nobility of men and women, 
and desire never to fall in your estimation. 
I thank you for the fruit and for your con- 
sideration. As the hall is lighted, I need not 
hold the lamp to show you down. Good 
night, sir,” and she gently closed the door. 

“Well done, by gad,” said Mr. Thurston, 
with a lurid look at the barricading panels; 
“but time! time!” 

Mary Ellen did not turn the key, for 
there was none to turn; but long after the 
sound of the creeping footsteps had died 
away, she stood leaning heavily against the 
door, with the dead weight of her numbed 
body, electrified by her alert and awakened 
mind, against the futile barrier which never 
could protect her from a man’s dasire. 

“God!” she whispered, fumbling weakly 
at the key-hole where she knew no protection 
lay, “God! I choose! I choose ! But what 
if he choose too! God, is there no way to 
strengthen the power of my choice for 
purity, for integrity, for the attributes of 


41 


I CHOOSE 
Thyself as they become known to me, and 
make them so strong that they may encom- 
pass me?” 

She moved from the door and stood in the 
centre of the room, unconsciously assuming 
the attitude of Joan of Arc listening to the 
voices, by which she had so startled Guy that 
afternoon. Then, stretching up her arms, 
she looked far out of the room in which she 
stood, into a white, luminous light, feeling, 
with her inner being, the power of her life 
expand, and gaining calm therefrom. 

“ ‘Yea, though I pass through the valley 
of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, 
for Thou art with me,’ — only the shadow, 
not the death, — there is none where Thou 
art, and Thou art within me. Likewise, 
Thou dost environ me. Thou dost lead me 
where lie the building stones of my charac- 
ter and the work of my life. I choose in- 
tegrity, I choose helpfulness, I choose to 
build of choice materials, — but ohl I am 
afraid!” 


CHAPTER VIII 



^l||jRS. Thurston,” said Mary 
Ellen the next morning, be- 


will ask you to supply my 


fore starting with Aldine for 
Mme. Pinchot’s, “ I think I 


place as soon as possible, as I have decided 
on other plans for my livelihood.” 

“Going on the stage, I suppose!” sneered 
Mrs. Thurston. “That is always the way! 
After the exhibition of yesterday I suppose 
you think you can be a Bernhardt or a Duse. 
A most preposterous proceeding, I call it. 
Mme. Pinchot ought to have known better. 
I am astounded that a woman of her ex- 
perience should have permitted such a 
thing. Of course, now you are upset for all 
the ordinary uses of life. All actresses are 
had, and if you want to remain a good girl 
you will stay under the protection of a home 
like this and not fly off your head at the first 
insincere praise from the outside world. Al- 


43 


I CHOOSE 
dine told me of that ridiculous performance 
yesterday, and I am disgusted.” 

“That has nothing to do with my decision, 
Mrs. Thurston. I simply choose to make a 
change,” said Mary Ellen. 

“And just as we’ve done all we have to 
make you comfortable, — giving you fresh, 
pretty paper for your room and all the other 
things.” 

“You have been kind, but I choose to go,” 
repeated Mary Ellen. 

“Of course you are free to do as you 
please and gratitude counts for nothing; 
but I hope you will stay till I can supply 
your place, for I expect guests, and your 
going is very inconvenient. If Mme. Pin- 
chot asks you to make a spectacle of your- 
self today, my advice to you would be to re- 
fuse. Hurry now or you will lose your 
boat.” 

Aldine looked grave as she started for the 
wharf in company with Mary Ellen. She 
had a broader view of life than her mother, 
besides being possessed of good health, 
which, in itself, is an aid to unbiased vision ; 
and though in no sense a humanitarian, still 


44 


I CHOOSE 

the thought of the times towards brother- 
hood had touched her, and though ever so 
faintly had impressed itself upon her atten- 
tion, if not upon her actions. 

“Mary Ellen, are you unhappy with us?” 
she said shyly, as they walked towards the 
boat. 

“Of course some things have been hard, 
Miss Aldine, but I could have made many 
of them happier had it occurred to me to do 
so; yet take it altogether, I have been com- 
fortable, if not wholly content.” 

“Do you feel that you are out-growing 
hoUse-work, Mary Ellen? I have noted a 
great change in you this summer. There is 
much demand for mother helpers such as 
you are capable of becoming. It is pitiful 
that just as soon as a girl shows herself equal 
to such a position she steps out of the home. 
It seems to be the curse of today from 
kitchen to salon. We all seem to be trying 
to find ourselves.” 

“I don’t think that stepping out of sur- 
roundings is going to help us find ourselves. 
It is our understanding that gives us new 
surroundings, not new surroundings our 
understanding.” 


I CHOOSE 45 

“Where do you get so much philosophy, 
Mary Ellen?” 

“I heard your friends talking about choice 
the day you first called me Marie Alano, 
and then I began to think; and nearly 
every one of those little gift books you 

brought to my room has explained more to 
>> 

me. 

“The very things I cast aside have been 
stepping stones to you! How strange!” 

“But there are so many points I do not 
understand yet. I wish I could find the lady 
you were talking about that day, who had 
learned how to live true, no matter by what 
she was surrounded. I think she would help 
me.” 

“Who was that?” 

“Sara Crewe.” 

“Oh, that is the name of a little girl in a 
story written by Frances Hodgson Burnett. 
We have the book in the library at the city 
house. If you want to read it, I’ll give you 
the key and you can get it after the lesson, 
while I am lunching with Sallie Prondfit. 
You can meet me at the wharf for the four 
o’clock boat. The book is in the children’s 


46 I CHOOSE 

corner of the library. I am sorry you feel 
like leaving us, Mary Ellen. What are you 
going to do?” 

“I don’t know,” replied Mary Ellen, her 
lip quivering. I think I shall go home for 
a while.” 

“Have you a home?” 

“A sort of one. It Used to be rather a 
good one; but somehow we lost hold and it 
began to go to pieces. There was much 
more there to hold together, as I realize now, 
than I had any idea of. It all seemed noth- 
ing; but as I get a better comprehension of 
the relative values of things, I understand 
how much that was really beautiful I have 
had and let slip out of my life.” 

“Mary Ellen,” said Mme. Pinchot, after 
referring in enthusiastic terms to her per- 
formance of the preceding day, “have you 
ever studied this work?” 

“Only from you, Mme. Pinchot,” replied 
Mary Ellen. 

“Behold a second Sebastian learning 
painting from his master,” tittered one of 
the girls; but Mme. Pinchot, ignoring the 
interruption, said gravely, “How have you 
learned from me?” 


I CHOOSE 47 

“I listened to your directions, then shut 
my eyes and saw myself following to the 
minutest detail all you advised. I could see 
myself as distinctly as I see clouds in the 
summer sky; and I was always moving be- 
fore a background of white light such as one 
sees at dawn or sometimes at late sunset. 
Then, when I went home, I tried to express 
outwardly what I had seen inwardly.” 

“I have taught hundreds of pupils,” said 
Mme. Pinchot, “but you only, to my knowl- 
edge, have found the path of illumination 
to wisdom. If you follow the gleam in all 
the steps of life, yours will be a wonderful 
experience. To you has been revealed the 
secret of attaining. What would you like 
to do?” she asked, calling her aside. 

“To find the quarry whence to hew the 
building blocks for my character,” said 
Mary Ellen solemnly. 

“Child, you know not what you ask! You 
can pick flowers by the roadside; but to 
quarry is to go into the depths, to be grimed, 
perhaps wounded, maimed.” 

“I want the understanding that will lead 
me on to ever-expanding environment. ‘A 


48 


I CHOOSE 

superior understanding forces a superior 
condition.’ I read that weeks ago. I must 
have understanding, — not flowers, but wis- 
don, — life! Mme. Pinchot, I am leaving the 
Thurstons.” 

Mme. Pinchot looked at the girl keenly. 

"Why, Mary Ellen?” 

"Circumstances, — rather, my understand- 
ing has been enlightened. I see I must step 
out.” 

"Have you any plans?” 

Mme. Pinchot was well satisfied as to 
what those circumstances were, but re- 
spected the dignity of the girl’s reticence. 

"None at all, Mme. Pinchot.” 

"Will you take a place with me till you 
find something better?” I need someone to 
assist the pupils to dress and undress and at- 
tend to keeping the costumes in order.” 

"I have promised to remain with Mrs. 
Thurston till she supplies my place; and I 
do not think she intends to hurry, for she is 
going to have guests and I think she will try 
to keep me till they have gone. I want to 
be kind.” 

"Not too long, Mary Ellen!” admonished 


I CHOOSE 49 

Mme. Pinchot. “Many a girl has lost the 
divine right of moral choice by yielding to 
the desire to be kind.” 


CHAPTER IX 



were entering the chamber 


lljARY Ellen turned the key of 
M the door to the city house 


and entered its cool pre- 
cinct, with a feeling as if she 


of initiation that, ending her novitiate, 
would enter her upon mysterious ways. 

There seemed no reason why the feeling 
should so possess her, for the house was 
rather commonplace as the houses of the 
well-to-do go. There was no especial per- 
sonality in the family which made itself felt 
in the furnishings. It was even too well 
aired to be musty, — a quality that tends, 
supposedly, towards mystery. She went 
to the children’s corner in the library, and 
there on the second shelf found the book she 
wanted, so small, so inconspicuous a volume 
to hold the mighty secret for which she 
sought! She glanced over it hurriedly, for 
she was a rapid reader, and soon had the 


50 



51 


I CHOOSE 

epitome of the story, leaving its cherished 
details for a time of greater leisure. 

“A beautiful idea/’ she said as she closed 
the hook to go, for it was after three, and 
she needed time to reach the wharf by four, 
“a beautiful idea; but I want to be my own 
Hindoo servant and Indian gentleman; I 
want to be conqueror of my own fate.” 

She was making the rounds of the house 
preparatory to leaving, when she heard the 
key in the front door, and Mr. Thurston 
came hastily into the hall. 

“Mary Ellen,” he said hurriedly, “Aldine 
told me you were here. Guy has had an 
accident and we have been sent for. Mrs. 
Thurston wants me to take you down to 
the train. She feels too shaken to be with- 
out attendance. I have a cab at the door.” 

Mary Ellen hastened down the steps and 
entered the vehicle, shocked at the news 
that the little fellow, quite her favorite in 
the family, who, the day before, full of life 
and vigor, had left home to visit his friend 
in a neighboring city, should have been 
stricken down. 

“Is it serious, Mr. Thurston?” she asked 


52 


I CHOOSE 

anxiously, when they were well on the way. 

“I can tell you nothing. After we get 
on the train I will read you the letter and 
see if you can make out what it is all about. 
Devilish mischief these boys get into, any- 
way. I hope we shall not lose that train,” 
and he pulled out his watch from time to 
time, after the manner of men. 

The train was about to move, when the 
two hastened up to the Pullman, boarding 
it just as the engine moved heavily out of 
the station. The porter led them through 
the car to the drawing room at the farther 
end. He threw open the door, asked for or- 
ders, bowed obsequiously at the liberal tip, 
and retired, leaving the two — alone. 

“Where is Mrs. Thurston?” said Mary 
Ellen, a terrible horror overwhelming her. 

“Don’t worry about her. I told Aldine 
you had sent me word you were taken ill 
and had gone to a friend’s; they won’t ex- 
pect you back for several days,” returned 
Mr. Thurston. “Sit down, Mary Ellen, I 
told you last night you were too fine a girl 
never to have a bit of fun.” 

“But, Mr. Thurston ” 


53 


I CHOOSE 

“Oh yes, I know. We will just take a run 
to Quebec and back again and no one will 
be the wiser.” 

“I shall be, — already am, — a great deal 
wiser,” said Mary Ellen. “Mr. Thurston, 
will you not let me pass and go at least into 
the common coach until we reach the next 
station? Then I will leave the train. My 
God, Mr. Thurston, how could you do this 
cruel thing? Think of Aldine! I am but 
little older than she. The world is so quick 
to cast a slur, and since Mrs. Thurston is 
not here, I prefer more publicity in our 
method of traveling.” 

“Oh no, we can manage things without 
any publicity. You really wouldn’t want 
that, you know. Sit down, Mary Ellen. I 
should think you would be so glad Guy 
is all right that you would submit to any- 
thing; you pretend to be so fond of him.” 

Mary Ellen stood perfectly still in the 
centre of the drawing room. She was 
trapped, and she knew it, — trapped like a 
rat in a cage, to be taught tricks and to serve 
as the plaything of a master. Here, shut in 
with a beast, and nothing between her and 


54 


I CHOOSE 
his passion. Nothing? These were her sur- 
roundings, but what of her environment 1 
Could she environ herself sufficiently with 
the power of God to hold the beast at bay? 
She quietly seated herself. So great a 
change had come over her that Mr. Thurs- 
ton, smug and sinister, smiling up at her 
from the corner of the couch, shivered and 
cowered. 

“Come, come, Mary Ellen, don't play to 
the grandstand. Come sit by me and be 
comfy.” 

“I am comfortable where I am/ she said, 
and fell upon silence. 

It was a silence so profound, so different 
from any he had ever encountered, that for 
the moment he respected it. 

“This is only the shadow of death,” Mary 
Ellen was saying, “only the shadow. A 
shadow passes. The reality is here, here, 
where Sara Crewe and God and I live. Al- 
ready I see light!” 

She closed her eyes and still remained 
motionless. The weeks of practicing con- 
trol at Mme. Pinchot’s were bearing fruit. 
She visioned hosts of protectors about her 
and her world was luminous to her. 


55 


I CHOOSE 

“Mary Ellen, for God’s sake move. Are 
you subject to fits? This is not what I came 
for, — fits!” said Mr. Thurston nervously. 

Finally Mary Ellen opened her eyes, and 
Mr. Thurston arose and came over and sat 
beside her. He put his hand caressingly 
upon her cheek. The contact stung him. 

“Gad!” he said. “What an electric bat- 
tery you are.’ ’ 

“A dynamo of power,” she replied. 
“Those books your wife and daughter gave 
me, Mr. Thurston, have been so beautiful to 
me. They were little gift books with pretty 
covers and I had nothing to do and the print 
was easy; but when I began to read them I 
felt as the blind must feel when they begin 
to read from raised text. Their thought 
has impressed itself upon my soul till now 
that is no longer what it was before, but a 
new creation, — a recognized entity.” 

“Pshaw! You couldn’t take that in in so 
short a time.” 

“The change comes in years or weeks or 
in a day. When we are ready, our environ- 
ment super-vises our surroundings; isn’t 
that a bealitiful idea? ‘Superior under- 


56 I CHOOSE 

standing forces superior conditions.’ I am 
very happy in my faith, Mr. Thurston; it 
makes me feel so sure.” 

“Do you believe all this occult stuff that 
is going the rounds?” 

“I don’t even know what you mean by 
occult.” 

“Why, it means hidden.” 

“No, all that is hidden shall be made 
plain. As we are here for some time, let me 
tell you the tale of little Sara Crewe. It 
is the story your daughter has been good 
enough to let me read.” 

He ptit forth his hand again to touch her, 
but again he was withheld as by some in- 
visible barrier. 

“You make me think of what Shakespeare 
says about, ‘He giveth angels a charge con- 
cerning thee,’ ” he said jocosely, “but he 
doesn’t say an eighty thousand voltage. 
That would kill a man. Go on and tell the 
story. You have a beautiful voice and I can 
listen to it, whether I hear your tale or not.” 

He looked desiringly at her, but she be- 
gan the little history with exquisite simpli- 
city, a poise and purity in her tone that 


I CHOOSE 57 

soothed him like a breeze and cooled the 
heated passion of his heart. 

The sunset flamed over the meadows and 
forests, flooded the world with crimson and 
died away. The hour came for dining and 
Mr. Thurston produced a luncheon, not dar- 
ing to face the dining car. Of this Mary 
Ellen partook. The shadows gathered and 
night fell. 

“ ‘The night has a thousand eyes, the day 
but one,’ ” said Mary Ellen to herself. 
“Then I am a thousand times more in the 
light than I was two hours ago.” 

The porter came and made preparations 
for the night, and still the train thundered 
on. 

“Are you going to compel this situation?” 
said Mary Ellen, standing before the man 
when the porter left them. 

“I am, you beauty, and it’s no use quarrel- 
ling with Fate. Fate is a very good friend 
when taken by the hand. You’re compro- 
mised already, so no appeal will amount to 
anything. They wouldn’t notice it anyway. 
The service would find it easier to evade a 
little matter like this than to face it. Come, 
kiss me, Mary Ellen.” 


58 


I CHOOSE 

“No, it is better not,” she said, putting up 
her hand and turning his face gently aside, 
though his silky moustache brushed her 
cheek as she moved from his lips, and with- 
held herself from the deadly chloroforming 
breath of a man in passion. 

“I’m going to bed,” he stated brusquely. 
“What are you going to do?” 

“I shall rest Upon the couch. Good night.” 

She closed her eyes and prayed, motion- 
less as a sleeping child, her hand pillowing 
her head; but behind those closed lids her 
spirit kept commerce with God, whose an- 
gels had indeed been given charge concern- 
ing her. And the dynamic power of her 
being sent forth protection through the 
darkness. 

Five times that night did this beast at bay 
leave his couch and stand beside the seem- 
ingly sleeping girl. Five times he put forth 
his hand to morally slay, and five times drew 
back, — afraid. 

When day came, he went surlily to the 
dressing room, viciously threw his belong- 
ings into his grip, and, as the engine drew 
up in the station, swung quickly from the 
still moving train and disappeared. 


CHAPTER X 



mss®. 


jjARY Ellen went slowly forth 
from the drawing room, 
alighted from the car, and 
made her way to the wait- 
ing room. She refreshed 
herself as best she could; then, before mak- 
ing any attempt to plan for the future, 
partook of breakfast. 

She had not sufficient money with which 
to return to the city whence she had been 
so ruthlessly dragged the day before; 
and she realized that a rested physical con- 
dition would add much to the ease of de- 
cision when that time should come. The 
coffee was very good and very hot, and she 
had a piece of broiled ham and eggs done to 
a turn and a baked potato. Then she went 
out into the bright light of the morning. 

She let the charm of the quaint old city 
take possession of her. Had she been there 
of her own choice and under most auspicious 
59 



60 I CHOOSE 

circumstances her mind could not have been 
more free. Only at intervals the Bible quo- 
tation so vulgarly brought to her attention 
floated as from an angel chorus to her inner 
sense: “He shall give His angels charge con- 
cerning thee lest thou dash thy foot against 
a stone.” 

t At length she found herself near the ca- 
thedral, and entered. It was practically 
empty. She needed rest, for she had not 
slept a moment the preceding night; and 
after kneeling she took a seat in the corner 
of a pew and closed her eyes. 

Only the teachings of the past few 
months came before her mind, not drift- 
ingly, as in a dream, but actually, as in real- 
ity. The hours of isolation had been to her, 
instead of a desolation and a curse, a world 
of her own, in which ideas that, in many 
minds, with distracting and diversified in- 
terests, take long to grow, had been fos- 
tered unhindered by the criticisms or doubts 
of those about her. While all had seemed 
antagonistic to her growth, all really had 
been helpful to it. The very lack of friends, 

- — the very imposed stillness, — surely all is 
well, — and lo, she was asleep. 


61 


I CHOOSE 
When she awoke it was nearly noon. She 
returned to the station, again refreshed her- 
self, and took her lunch. Then, going into ' 
the waiting room, she considered her di- 
lemma. She had given her word to Mrs. 
Thurston to stay with her Until a competent 
substitute was found, and do it she would, 
if possible. How could she hope to build 
character without Truth, which is what 
“Principle compels!” 

“Here is a block of choice material with 
which to build,” she thought, recurring to 
her talk with Mme. Pinchot. “Now, how 
can I get back! That is beyond my reason 
to decide. I will seek light.” 

Of facing Mr. Thurston again she 
seemed to have no fear. She closed her 
eyes. Clouds of dull gray masses floated 
before her inner vision. The outer light 
from the great windows disturbed her by 
the glare, and removing her black ribbon 
belt she pinned it over her eyes and sat still. 

“Light!” she called. Then her mind 
ceased its activity and she waited. Yea, 
even her constant attitude of intelligent ser- 
vice was fulfilling its purpose now, in ways 


62 


I CHOOSE 
of growth so natural to her that she did not 
know they were founded on the divine law 
of manifestation of the Principle of Being, 
which, being permanent, is constantly dem- 
onstrating. 

A party of two gentlemen, a lady and 
three little children had entered the waiting 
room together with a woman evidently the 
nurse, who seemed desperately ill. Soon 
the ambulance attendants appeared and the 
woman was taken away, leaving the frail 
looking mother in charge of three as rest- 
less specimens of humanity as are often put 
on to this planet for the alternate distraction 
and delectation of mankind. 

“I do not see how I can get down to Bos- 
ton by myself with the babies,” she sighed 
distractedly to her husband. “After I reach 
there my old nurse will willingly help me; 
but oh, that terrible fifteen hours. Leopold, 
I cannot do it!” 

‘Dear Heart, I wish I cotild go with 
you,” replied the husband tenderly, “but you 
know how it is. I am glad that Marie could 
be left here in good care. It would have 
been a terrible responsibility for you had she 


I CHOOSE 63 

been taken ill on the way. Now you can rest 
content that she is well attended, even if you 
are discommoded by her absence.” 

“Don’t you suppose that, among all these 
people, there is one person we could trust to 
take her place? We have no time to go out 
for any one. Carles,” she said, turning to 
her brother, “look about in that wonderful 
way of yours and try to see some one you 
dare approach. The train goes in half an 
hour. We can pay her way down and back 
again and for the time besides. Surely, 
there is some one in all this crowd of hunt- 
ing, hunted looking people who can serve 
us. See, Carles.” 

Mr. Orchester left the party, and instead 
of looking over the motley assemblage of 
women of divers degrees of intelligence, he 
moved from them and stood apart. Then 
he turned again and looked upon them. 

“Willoughby,” he said, walking towards 
his brother-in-law, “do you see that young 
woman in the black mohair with the faint 
white stripe? Watch her a moment.” 

Mary Ellen was removing the ribbon 
from her eyes, and at the same moment the 
baby of the group lunged suddenly forward 


64 


I CHOOSE 

and ran gurgling towards her. She caught 
it up just in time to prevent its falling and 
striking its head upon the edge of the seat. 
With it still in her arms she went over to 
the group. 

“I will take care of her till yotir train goes 
if you would like to have me,” she said to 
the little mother. “I love children, and my 
time is free. Was the nurse very ill?” 

“We could not tell. It was a sudden at- 
tack and it seemed imprudent for her to 
travel. I shall be so relieved if you will care 
for baby till the train leaves. She is a per- 
fect little witch. I do not know how I shall 
get her to Boston all by myself. You don’t 
happen to know anyone who would like to 
take the trip down there, do you? She can 
come back by return train, if she desires, and 
I will pay her well for her services.” 

“I shall be very glad to go with you if you 
will let me leave you at once upon our ar- 
rival. I have an obligation to meet outside 
the city, and shall not wish to return here.” 

“You are a godsend,” sighed the relieved 
mother; “and see, the children like you.” 

“And so are you a godsend,” said Mary 
Ellen. 


CHAPTER XI 



them. Soon the baby went 


HE children gathered happily 
about Mary Ellen, while the 
mother sat back in her car 
seat and as happily watched 


to sleep, and Mary Ellen opening her book 
began to read to the older ones the story of 
Sara Crewe. 

Mrs. Willoughby drew near and listened 
as well as did the children ; and when finally 
the two elder followed the example of their 
baby sister and succumbed to sleep, she 
began to talk. 

“You look as if you had been somewhat of 
a Sara Crewe yourself/ she said, watching 
Mary Ellen’s face, in which was written, 
deeply graven, something that had not been 
there three days before. It was not en- 
graved in wrinkles, nor in disfiguring lines ; 
but as the artist builds his colors on the care- 
fully applied prime which is never seen, but 


65 



66 


I CHOOSE 
always felt, so, in the depths of the eyes, in 
the wonderful clarity of the skin, there was 
shown to the practised observer a transmu- 
tation of the gross into the finer fibre of life. 
“Has your Hindoo servant appeared?” 

“Yes, Mrs. Willoughby,” replied Mary 
Ellen, with a sense of grim humor at the 
thought; “but he didn’t play the role exactly 
like Sara Crewe’s helper: — not so helpful to 
outward appearances, — but I know now that 
he has given me a long lift upward. I said 
yesterday I wanted to be my own Hindoo 
servant and Indian gentlemen, but we can’t 
be that, after all. We have to be helpers, 
one with another; and we get uplifts where 
least we expect to find them, if we keep fol- 
lowing our gleam.” 

“You say you have been in service?” 

“I have,” replied Mary Ellen. “My 
father was a doctor and a learned man in 
everything but how to make this world count. 
I don’t know but that that is as necessary a 
thing to learn as any other. It doesn’t seem 
natural that we can expect to do much bet- 
ter, relatively, with the next condition than 
we have done with the present one, does it? 


I CHOOSE 67 

But father died years ago, and the home was 
broken up.” 

“Do you know anything of brotherhood 
work? If you ever care to look into it, go, 
or write, to my brother, Carles Orchester. 
He is a wonderful man, Mary Ellen. He 
belongs to a school of thinkers who not only 
believe in, but strive to live as Spirit mani- 
festing through transitory things. He found 
you before the baby did. It seems as if out- 
ward appearances have no power to keep 
from him the knowledge of the real. He 
believes that we are all parts of an infinite 
One; and if we keep the circulation, so to 
speak, free, all members of that Body can 
work consciously together, finding help 
in each other, and uplift. Even as the vine, 
sending its sap, (or the mind wisdom of na- 
ture), through the branches and grapes, 
works to its outermost unconscious periph- 
ery in harmony, so we, the branches and 
fruit, may receive, consciously , if we culti- 
vate and use God given gifts of spiritual in- 
sight and of choice. I will give you Mr. 
Orchester’s card.” 

“I thank you,” said Mary Ellen, her face 


68 I CHOOSE 

illumined, “though, by what you say, that is 
not necessary ; for if ever I should need him, 
these same gifts of choice and spiritual in- 
sight will lead me to him or him to me,” 

“Such gifts come only by cultivation. 
The majority have to depend upon the ap- 
parent means, or so it seems to them. Carles 
puts it this way: Wherever his card, or any- 
thing connected with him, goes, his individu- 
ality has established a connection; so he 
says it is not the card in any case, it is the 
expansion of his environment, constantly, in 
its extending circumference, coming rhyth- 
mically into harmony with the expanding 
environments of others. A beautiful idea, is 
it not?” 

“Beautiful!” said Mary Ellen. “Some- 
how it makes surroundings so very unim- 
portant after all, if we can reach out from 
within and seize the essence. I suppose that 
is what we are here to learn.” 

Mary Ellen took the early morning boat 
out of Boston and reached the Thurstons 
just as they were going down stairs to 
breakfast. 

“I must say, Mary Ellen, it was most in- 


69 


I CHOOSE 
considerate of you to be sick just as my 
house is to be full of company,” was Mrs. 
Thurston’s greeting. “I’ve been in such a 
nervous state since you left, to know what 
I was going to do. Now you are here, do 
hurry and straighten things up a little; 
then, before you pack, for I suppose that is 
what you came for, go back to town and see 
if you can get me anyone from the employ- 
ment bureau to take yotir place, — if you are 
still determined to leave us and go on to the 
stage. Aldine will have to let you go out 
during the lesson time.” 

“Are you feeling quite well again, Mary 
Ellen?” said Aldine shyly. She was always 
shy when she spoke to the servants at all as 
if they were human, especially before her 
mother. 

“I feel very well, I thank you, Miss Al- 
dine,” returned Mary Ellen. 

“Oh, and Mary Ellen, we will have to do 
without your services at table, for I have 
promised to send Guy some things and need 
something to pack them in. There are sev- 
eral soap boxes out in the barn. I wish you 
would get one, brush it up, and pack the 


I CHOOSE 


70 

articles that are lying on his bed. There’s 
fishing tackle, and heaven knows what! 
Look out you don’t get any fish hooks into 
your fingers.” 

“Mother!” said Aldine in an aside, “do 
send her into the kitchen first for some 
breakfast. She looks thoroughly ex- 
hausted.” 

“Oh yes, of course, — I forgot. Go and 
get some breakfast, Mary Ellen; and I am 
sorry you have been sick. Oh dear, I sup- 
pose I might have said that when she first 
came in; but one forgets to be decent with 
all the pressure that is put upon us nowa- 
days. Come to the beach to rest, indeed! 
With this ark of a place and grounds, it’s 
worse slavery than the city house where 
things are more compact. I begin to think 
the civilization of today is turning us into 
devils.” 

“I suppose, as Mary Ellen is so fond of 
saying, we choose these things, so we can’t 
blame anybody but ourselves if they turn 
and rend us,” said Aldine thoughtfully. “I 
am sorry Mary Ellen is going. I believe 
she was beginning to make me more hu- 
man.” 


I CHOOSE 


71 


Mary Ellen went into the kitchen and 
swallowed a cup of coffee; then taking a cou- 
ple of muffins in her hand, she went out to 
the barn. A part of the harness room was 
set aside for the preservation of useable 
packing boxes. As she opened the door, she 
started back; for there, grim and sinister, 
stood Mr. Thurston. 

“You needn’t play off that you don’t want 
to see me after coming back here to hunt me 
up,” he began. 

“Mr. Thurston,” replied Mary Ellen, “I 
promised your wife not to leave her in the 
lurch; and had I not done so, I have too 
much regard for her as a good mistress, and 
for my own character, to vanish in air leav- 
ing her in ignorance as to my fate. If she 
has any heart she might have wasted much 
sympathy over my sick plight and uncertain 
end. Certainly, had she cared sufficiently to 
trace me, disaster would have overwhelmed 
your home. I do not wish to bring wreck- 
age upon your family. I am fond of them 
all.” 

“Afraid of discovery, eh!” sneered Mr, 
Thurston. 


72 I CHOOSE 

“I afraid? Of what? I fear nothing. 
It is you who should be afraid!” 

She turned deliberately, passing behind 
Mr. Thurston, to leave the room. A second 
after she had moved beyond his range of 
vision, there sounded a report, and he fell to 
the floor, shot from some unknown source. 

He had been hunting that morning, and 
Mary Ellen, turning in the direction of the 
sound, saw his gun hanging on the wall di- 
rectly in line with him, though the hand that 
had pressed the trigger, was nowhere to be 
seen. 

Quickly she loosed the belt from her waist, 
and while calling for help with all the 
strength of her strong yoting lungs, drew it 
tight above the knee until the wound turned 
back, thus materially stopping the flow of 
blood. 

“By heaven, Mary Ellen,” he gasped as 
she bent over him. “This is a devilish re- 
venge you have taken on me for my pleas- 
antries.” 

Mary Ellen did not reply. 

When help came she was taken into cus- 
tody without bail, for an attempt upon the 
life of her employer. 


I CHOOSE 73 

They did not move him until the doctor 
came. Just before they lifted him to take 
him to the house he whispered to Mary 
Ellen, 

“Can we make a pact?” 

“No,” said Mary Ellen, “now and for- 
ever, no!” 

“Take this girl into custody,” said Mr. 
Thurston, turning to the doctor. “It was 
she who shot me.” 


CHAPTER XII 


HERE was no use in denial; 
no one else could possibly 
have done it. The gun 
hung on the wall as Mr. 
Thurston had left it, but 
with one barrel empty. Who could have 
taken it down and replaced it but Mary 
Ellen? Besides, Mr. Thurston swore to the 
truth of his statement, and he was “an hon- 
orable man.” The motive? That was be- 
cause Mr. Thurston had missed harnesses 
and feed, and in trying to trace the thief had 
asked Mary Ellen questions which she had 
chosen to consider aspersions on her hon- 
esty. She had been unreasonably enraged 
at his very natural questionings, had caught 
up the gun, perhaps not really intending to 
kill, but it had gone off in her hands and he 
was to have a stiff leg for life, probably, to 
pay for her temper. As to the theft, he had 
no reason to think she had anything to do 
74 



I CHOOSE 75 

with it and had never thought she did have. 
He was only trying to find out from leading 
questions if she had any suspicions as to the 
culprit. 

That was practically all there was to the 
trial ; hut the verdict sent Mary Ellen to the 
penitentiary for five years. 


CHAPTER XIII 



driven up to the great 


O find the quarry whence to 
hew the building blocks for 


my character,’ ” said Mary 
Ellen grimly, as she was 


building set in the midst of green and 
restfulness, in one of the sweetest spots 
in Massachusetts. “I said that to Mme. 
Pinchot and she told me I might be grimed 
in the quarrying. Yet, you chose it! Re- 
member, Mary Ellen, you chose it! Now 
choose to hew welir 

They went through the preliminaries of 
her entrance, and she was shown her home 
for the next five years! 

“My environment supervises it all,” said 
Mary Ellen ; and she smiled. 

They had let her bring her few books with 
her, and these after being carefully in- 
spected, went with her into her little cell. 
Aldine never bought such books as these for 


76 



I CHOOSE 77 

herself, though she had many friends among 
those flitting about the edge of better 
things who were continually sending them 
to her, hoping to interest her; but she did 
not know how to use them, and passed on 
to Mary Ellen those that she could dispose 
of without the detection of the givers. 

“Use them, Marie Alano,” she said to 
her once; “perhaps a little of your wisdom 
will fall on me sometime, and help me when 
I need it most, because I have given these to 
you,” and she laughed half wistfully. 

When the moment of elevation which was 
upon Mary Ellen at her entrance into cap- 
tivity had passed, the desperation of the 
situation appalled her. Oh, the spaces, 
the whiteness, the vacuity of it all ! She was 
taken at once to work in the kitchen, and 
when she saw the great vats and the loaves 
of bread, waist high, she was seized with 
such nervous hysteria that the physician 
was called. Recognizing the highly sensi- 
tized organism with which he had to deal, he 
wisely did not send her to the infirmary, hut 
back to her own cell; and someone, (she did 
not know who) sent her some flowers, and 


78 I CHOOSE 

moved her little table of books close to her 
cot; and there she found, one day, the last 
book Aldine had given her, “The Soul of 
the Bible,” written in familiar Language. 
Opening it listlessly, she was struck with 
the comradeship of the One who rose in the 
synagogue and read so simply and tenderly : 

“ The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 

Because he hath anointed me 
To preach good tidings to the poor; 

He hath sent me 
To heal the broken-hearted, 

And to proclaim release to the captives, 

And recovering of sight to the blind, 

To set at liberty them that are bruised, 

To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” 

“That is what I will try to do,” said Mary 
Ellen. 

But when the principal of the prison her- 
self came to see her, Mary Ellen rose on her 
couch and held out her arms. 

“I am not a number,” she cried deliriously, 
“I am a soul. I am Marie Alano, and I have 
come to quarry building blocks for my char- 
acter.” 

The woman stooped down and took the 
girl in her arms. 


I CHOOSE 


79 


“Marie Alano you shall always be to me; 
and I shall think of you as such,” she said, 
and Mary Ellen sank back, content. 

Somewhat austere in appearance, it is 
true, but an angel in the flesh was this prin- 
cipal of the reformatory, — one of the first to 
institute humanizing methods out of rou- 
tine, and to recognize the individual. The 
women adored her; and when Mary Ellen 
attended the first service and saw the faces 
of the girls radiate with joy or bend low with 
pathetic disappointment as they passed her, 
acknowledged or unacknowledged, through 
the flower she gave or withheld as token of 
their endeavors through the week, she felt 
again the elevation with which she had en- 
tered the place. 

“ ‘To proclaim release to the captives,’ — 
release from their old ideas and their sur- 
roundings. Perhaps I can help,” — and 
when one girl burst into tears and kissed 
Miss Lemson’s hand as it passed her the 
pure white lily as a token that she had done 
all she had been asked to do, Mary Ellen 
nearly fainted with ecstasy of the revelation 
of what her life of helpfulness might be, and 


80 I CHOOSE 

of what small things count in bringing great 
results. 

“I choose integrity! I choose helpful- 
ness!” she said. “Surely I have it here;” 
and she went cheerfully to her place in the 
refectory, where good but meagre fare was 
set forth in tin plates and cups on bare 
tables, with no knives or forks or napkins. 
A girl near by was as happy as a child with 
a spoon gained as reward for good behavior; 
another had acquired ugly broken ware in 
place of tin; but farther down the long hall 
Mary Ellen saw a table set with all the 
dainty appointments of a well ordered 
household, the reward of those who had at- 
tained. 

And so it was throughout the prison life, 
— working through to salvation and prog- 
ress, always. No step forward was unnoted, 
and steps backward were tenderly dealt with. 
The girls did not wear stripes, but were 
clothed in dresses of plaided homespun made 
by themselves; and as she saw the clumsy 
mis-matching of the goods and the awkward 
cut of some of the outfits she believed, if 
she were given opportunity, that she could 
find everywhere a place to help. 


I CHOOSE 81 

For herself, she determined to go for- 
ward. She read her books over and over, 
and pondered upon them. In her hours of 
seclusion she meditated carefully over the 
lessons she had seen at Mme. Pincliot’s and 
expressed her impression as best she could, 
and every day she grew in grace as the re- 
sult of her practice. She found that pe- 
culiar buoyancy and hopefulness were 
achieved by the careful utilization of the 
fingers, not knowing she was following in 
the footsteps of scientific builders of brain. 
She took every opportunity to use her fin- 
gers co-ordinately with her mind, and with 
delicate precision. 

The glare of the white walls tired her 
eyes, and she begged a black ribbon with 
which she covered them while thinking; and 
to farther exclude the light, she covered that 
with white. Then, sitting pondering the 
things she had learned, and wondering over 
the meanings she did not understand, she 
evolved through that inner vision, thus un- 
consciously evoked, such breadth of revela- 
tion that the prison walls were felled for her 
by something stronger than axe or pick, — 
the power of the conscious mind. 


82 


I CHOOSE 

As the days went on, and her favors, be- 
cause of behavior, were more frequent, she 
became almost free within the precincts of 
the place, and sometimes was allowed to go 
across the green grass all alone to pick flow- 
ers in Miss Lemson’s private garden. Lit- 
tle by little she became part of the lives 
of hundreds about her, and the name crept 
from one to another until she was universally 
called “The little sister of us alL ,, Where- 
ever she was allowed to go, there went she. 
Women who had remained obdurate with 
keepers and helpers melted before Marie 
Alano, and became like little children. 

Miss Lemson, the head of the prison, was 
growing old, though never once did her 
grasp weaken on affairs or sotils. When 
Marie Alano had become a “trusty,” Miss 
Lemson took her often as her individual 
maid and talked to her from out her vast ex- 
perience, and Mary Ellen responded so com- 
prehendingly that sometimes she herself was 
alarmed at the knowledge, which swept in 
upon her from she knew not where. 

“I feel as if I know things I am sure I 
have never learned,” she said, amazed, one 


83 


I CHOOSE 
day. “I feel, Miss Lemson, as if the stores 
of my father’s mind were poured into 
mine, selected and digested;” and behind the 
windows of her soul her inner vision con- 
templated and meditated upon the wonders 
she had found. 

Miss Lemson brought her into touch with 
teachers, among them a German and a 
French woman of great cultivation, and 
with a musician of both instrumental and 
vocal work; and while the latter taught her 
harmony as mathematically conceived, she 
revealed to him the inner meaning of that 
same rhythm and harmony in the universe 
so far as she had learned it. 

“Marie Alano,” said Miss Lemson one 
day when Mary Ellen, with gentle hands, 
was dressing the principal’s hair, “you never 
committed the crime for which you were 
sentenced. Of that I feel asstired. No girl 
could leap into the poise that you possess, 
and no girl with such poise would lift a 
weapon against another in a fit of passion. 
Only as a premeditated crime could I be- 
lieve the thing possible of you, and that I 
know it was not, both from the testimony 


84 


I CHOOSE 

and from what I know of your character. 
Did you do all you could to clear yourself, 
Marie Alano?” 

“No, Miss Lemson, I did not,” said Mary 
Ellen. 

“Why not?” 

“At first I was too stunned. I knew no 
one to whom to turn. I had been given the 
card of a wonderful man, a lawyer on 
whom I might have called to defend me; but 
when the card was given me, I felt so sure 
that, should I need him, I should know how 
to find him without material means, I never 
even looked at the bit of pasteboard, and 
when they picked up my things and sent 
them here, it was lost.” 

“Yes,” said Miss Lemson, “principle 
works always through manifestation. We 
must not overlook the smallest messenger in 
form, however evanescent or insignificant it 
may seem.” 

“I know his name, but am glad now I did 
not know where to find him; for I should 
have fallen from my pledge of helpfulness. 
Had he taken the case and cleared me, it 
would have wrecked many lives, whereas 
now only mine is assailed.” 


85 


I CHOOSE 

“Tell me about it, Marie Alano.” 

“You believe me innocent. Will you re- 
gard my reasons for reticence? I do not 
know who fired the shot, but it was not I.” 

One day, in the beginning of her fifth 
year of sentence, she was crossing the gar- 
den when she passed a workman newly en- 
gaged upon the place. He straightened 
himself as she passed, and watched her out 
of sight. 

“Who is that girl?” he said to a woman 
weeding a garden near by. 

“We have all forgotten her as a number, 
long ago, but she is known everywhere as 
“The little sister of us all,” replied the girl. 

In a few moments the man presented 
himself at Miss Lemson’s office and begged 
an audience. 

“Miss Lemson,” he said quickly, “on 
what charge was ‘The little sister of us all’ 
sentenced?” 

“For shooting a man in a fit of passion. 
Why?” 

“Because she never shot him.” 

“By what right do you make that asser- 
tion?” said Miss Lemson, motioning the man 
to a chair. 


86 


I CHOOSE 
“By the right of my two good eyes. I 
saw the whole thing. I had been stealing 
from the Thurstons fairly regular, for 
some time, — chicken feed and so forth, but 
got bold and stole two fine harnesses. I 
felt very secure, for I had covered my 
tracks well. I don’t mind telling all about 
it now, for I have served my time for the 
steal and they have their harnesses back. 
That day I had heard that Mr. Thurston was 
trying some tricks to catch me and I wanted 
to see by daylight what they were. I was 
walking up to the barn quite boldly under 
plea of examining a horse he had advertised 
for sale, but no one was in sight. I scared a 
hen in her nest in a clump of lilacs near the 
door. She ran into the harness room flut- 
tering and squawking, as the fools will, and 
I heard her fly up. I looked in and caught 
sight of Mr. Thurston and this girl you all 
call ‘little sister of us all.’ A gun was hang- 
ing on the wall just on a line with the man, 
and what does the blamed hen do but light 
on the trigger and off it goes. I heard the 
girl call for help and put space between me 
and the shooting as quick as possible. I had 


I CHOOSE 87 

no thought anyone would be convicted or 
I’d have appeared and acknowledged my 
presence and told about the hen. I was 
caught myself a little later, and my own 
troubles made me forget the incident. Who 
accused her?” 

“Mr. Thurston himself,” replied Miss 
Lemson. 

“The devil he did. He knew it was a lie. 
He knew she never went near the gun. 
Now what did he do that for?” 

“Will you stand by your statement?” 

“I will,” replied the man. “Call on me 
when you please.” 

“Marie Alano, you are exonerated,” said 
Miss Lemson as soon as she could summon 
Mary Ellen to her. “My dear, dear child, 
I have always believed in you.” 

“I have always been exonerated,” said 
Mary Ellen simply. “I have never been 
condemned. Why, I have never been in 
captivity! I am free.” 

Miss Lemson was a wonderful woman and 
she understood. 

“What shall we do, Marie Alano? Shall 
we set forward proceedings for your re- 
lease?” 


88 


I CHOOSE 


“No,” said Mary Ellen. “I am not in 
bondage. I have followed my choice. 
What more can I desire? Let me stay here 
till my time is out, then I will take my next 
step in the worship of God by service to 
man. What more of life could one want 
than that, Miss Lemson?” 

“But when you go out from here your 
character should be freed from the unjust 
accusation. He should he compelled to re- 
tract.” 

“My character is far beyond his touch. 
How little is this spot compared with the 
spaces I have seen in my moments of si- 
lence and seclusion. Miss Lemson, I feel 
often that I have been face to face with the 
hidden things of God, and I have tried to 
manifest them in the flesh.” 

“Marie Alano,” said Miss Lemson ten- 
derly, “I truly believe you have.” 


CHAPTER XIV 



gET the time was drawing 
near for her dismissal. The 
situation must be faced. 
During the last six months, 
as was often the case with 
the prisoners, Mary Ellen went about on 
probation. A woman of regal bearing and 
benign presence, not cultured as in com- 
mon parlance, but learned in things of 
which she had gained cognizance through 
the spirit-guided intellect, she had, during 
the last weeks, spoken before many audi- 
ences on the life of the prisoner and the way 
to approach reforms. Now the time had 
come for a definite stand in the outside 
world. What should that stand be? 

The morning mail brought a letter from 
Aldine. A bit of pasteboard dropped out 
from its folds. 

“Dear Marie Alano,” (the note began), 
“I found this little card today in the copy of 
Sara Crewe. It must be yours, I know ; and 
89 


90 


I CHOOSE 


now that your time of release is near, I hope 
it may be of Use to you. Marie Alano, my 
heart aches with the horror of this thing our 
family has imposed on you. No court or 
jury, no statement of my father’s can make 
me believe you guilty. Your purity speaks 
far above the voices and judgment of men. 
God help me, Marie Alano.” 

Mary Ellen took the card. It was Carles 
Orchester’s. 

The next day she sought the address 
transcribed upon it. 

Its owner knew her when he saw her. 

“Mr. Orchester,” she said directly, “I 
want to enter your Brotherhood of Service 
as a novice. I have so much to learn. Will 
you admit me?” 

Carles Orchester looked through her eyes 
for one full minute, and as steadily she 
looked through his. Then he rose and 
passed into the next room. He returned 
at once, bringing to her a noble company of 
men and women. 

“Friends,” he said, “here is one who seeks 
to enter upon a novitate. Instead, behold, 
already, — a Master!” 







APR U 1910 - 


















* 




















' * 


. * 


t 













. / 









































































































































. 












































' . 


One copy del. 


to Cat. Div. 




